We are military and moving from North Carolina to Texas, with a short stay in South Carolina until we get a home in Texas. Dd will start 9th grade in September while we are still in South Carolina waiting on husbands paperwork to finish up and finding a house. Since we are not staying in South Carolina and are only in transition, what would the laws in South Carolina require? Thanks for any insight.

Soulhammer

07-15-2013, 08:17 PM

SC has three ways to hs: supervision by the district, registration w the SC Independent Home School Association (a statewide group), and registration with a so-called third-option accountability association. We do the third option, which requires that I notify the district that I'm homeschooling and doesn't require any standardized testing. Since you won't be staying long (hopefully, right?), maybe the third option would be less of a hassle.

If you will be near or on base, there is probably a school liaison service like the one listed here Home Schooling (http://www.fortjacksonmwr.com/school_liaison/education/homeSchooling.html) for Fort Jackson. I'd check there first: there's nothing like talking to folks who have already done it already. That page also has an overview of the law. Best of luck!

kohlby

07-18-2013, 03:20 PM

Is there a way to keep your legal residence as North Carolina and then switch it to Texas? That would mean one less state to report to. I homeschool under option 3 in SC. I use PIE (Palmetto Independent Educators) as my accountability group and it's really easy. It also may depend what Texas's laws are and how long you're in SC. I do not need to notify the district that I'm homeschooling in.(Unless I'm doing the kindy waiver, but then I don't need to do any of the 3 options). The accountability group does report to the state however. Will your husband be in Texas officially while you're still in SC? If so, perhaps you could call your legal residence TX before the rest of the family moves. I'm not sure of the logistics with military so I agree with asking through a military homeschool group. For things like taxes and car registration, a friend told me that they can have a base state that is their legal residence even if they don't live there. Since the military moves people around a lot, it means less changing over until they're in a place for a while. I'm not sure if homeschooling falls into that as well.

GThomas

07-21-2013, 07:25 PM

This brings up an interesting question for me. What if one has moved to a new state and is only staying for a few months. Does it even need to be reported to anyone? Wouldn't your status, if asked, be "just visiting"?

Freedom

07-23-2013, 02:18 PM

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I thought I could do the just visiting and we are actually Texas residence but we had to register in North Carolina while living there. We are still registered in N.C. and our home is in the process of closing soon. I guess I need to find out how long I can legally visit South Carolina without this being an issue. I didn't understand the 3 options after reading about them on the internet. S.C. requirements differ greatly from N.C. For now we are in limbo and still do not have paperwork in hand for Texas. Could be one of two areas they send us too. I really dislike this waiting game but there isn't a thing I can do about it other then make sure I'm legal with schooling.

GThomas

07-23-2013, 06:29 PM

Ok...so say...hypothetically...that we are in North Carolina right now....but we thought we were moving to China within 2 months but that got changed and now might move to Toronto (yada, yada)... and now several months have passed and (hypothetically) we were still here...and have never told anyone??? Would (theoretically)...we'd be in trouble???

We started homeschooling halfway through our time in India and have never registered as homeschoolers, anywhere (hypothetically of course!)